Before going into his private room to think and plan and
telephone, he looked out on the west veranda. There sat his
daughter; and a few feet away was David Hull, his long form
stretched in a hammock while he discoursed of his projects for a
career as a political reformer. The sight immensely pleased the
old man. When he was a boy David Hull's grandfather, Brainerd
Hull, had been the great man of that region; and Martin Hastings,
a farm hand and the son of a farm hand, had looked up at him as
the embodiment of all that was grand and aristocratic. As
Hastings had never travelled, his notions of rank and position
all centred about Remsen City. Had he realized the extent of the
world, he would have regarded his ambition for a match between
the daughter and granddaughter of a farm hand and the son and
grandson of a Remsen City aristocrat as small and ridiculous.
But he did not realize.
Davy saw him and sprang to his feet.
``No--no--don't disturb yourselves,'' cried the old man. ``I've
got some things to 'tend to. You and Jenny go right ahead.''
And he was off to his own little room where he conducted his own
business in his own primitive but highly efficacious way. A
corps of expert accountants could not have disentangled those
crabbed, criss-crossed figures; no solver of puzzles could have
unravelled the mystery of those strange hieroglyphics. But to
the old man there wasn't a difficult--or a dull--mark in that
entire set of dirty, dog-eared little account books.
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